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fossil fuel divestment
The Cowardice of the Financial Elite Could Doom Us All to Climate Hell
For a brief moment, lots of financial leaders said they were going to take steps to address climate change, but when Big Oil pushed back with the help the GOP, they turned tail and ran. It's time for them to turn and fight.
Jan 29, 2026
Any resistance needs to celebrate its victories, and the weekend’s retreat by the administration is a big one: Should the forces of decency ever regain the upper hand in DC, we need a monument to the people of Minneapolis on the National Mall, and busts of Renee Good and Alex Pretti in the Capitol.
And it’s not just the Trump administration that those brave people faced down, it’s the pundit class too, who insisted over and over that progressives should avoid talking about immigration because it wasn’t politically popular. The other subject we’ve been told to sideline is “climate change,” for fear of offending voters more interested in “affordability.” (Former Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm told an industry audience Monday that “on Maslow’s hierarchy of human needs, climate does not rise as much as how much I'm paying for my electricity bill,” which is one of those things that sounds clever until you meet someone who lost their home to a wildfire.)
I actually have no problem with the advice to focus on electric bills—as I wrote a couple of weeks ago, I think affordability, especially of electricity, is an issue that helps both elect Democrats and reduce carbon emissions, since anyone interested in the cost of power is going to be building sun and wind. But I also don’t think that talking about global warming is a mistake—most Americans, polls show, understand the nature of the crisis, and want action to stem it. It isn’t the single most salient issue because all of us live in this particular moment (and in this particular moment the fact that federal agents are executing citizens who dare to take cell phone pictures of them is definitely the most salient issue) but it is nonetheless a net plus for politicians, especially in blue states.
As we were reminded Tuesday morning, when Drew Warshaw, a candidate for New York state comptroller with a long record of building clean energy in the private sector, released a true bombshell report. In it he called for the state to divest its vast pension funds from fossil fuels—and provided the data to show that the failure of the incumbent to do that over the last two decades had cost taxpayers $15 billion in foregone returns. Billion with a b. That’s $750 for every woman, man, and child in the Empire State, all because the longstanding (as in, way too long) state treasurer, Thomas DiNapoli, has ignored the counsel of one expert after another and kept the state invested in Big Oil. (Oh, and since cowardice often consorts with incompetence, another report also finds that DiNapoli has cost the state more than $50 billion by underperforming index funds and giving huge contracts to various advisers.
Always remember, most of the nation’s economy is in places that voted against Trump. It’s a weapon that needs to be used.
A bit of backstory here. Fifteen years ago, some of us launched a fossil fuel divestment campaign. At the beginning the argument was mostly moral: It was wrong to try and make a profit off the end of the world, and if we could convince institutions to sell that stock it would tarnish Big Fossil’s social license.
But it didn’t take long for another argument to emerge. The pension funds, college endowments, and others who joined the movement reported that they were making money as a result, and for a very simple reason: Anything that they put the money into was generating better returns than coal, gas, and oil. And that in turn was for an even simpler reason: Fossil fuel is a faltering industry, because an alternative—the trinity of sun, wind, and batteries—now produces the same product, just cleaner and cheaper. That’s why 95% of new generating capacity around the world last year came from renewables; fossil fuel only has a good year any more if something goes very wrong (the invasion of Ukraine, say).
Anyway, this became the largest anti-corporate effort of its kind in history, with funds representing $41 trillion in investments joining in. Its had powerful effects—when Peabody Coal filed for bankruptcy, for instance, its legal documents listed divestment as a reason. But it also protected the fiscal integrity of the funds that did the right thing—they had more money to pay pensions, provide scholarships, or whatever else. That’s why pension funds in states and entire countries joined in.
Which brings us back to New York. Advocates have put in tens of thousands of person hours explaining to DiNapoli that he should join pension funds in dozens of other places in divesting from fossil fuels, and he has dragged his feet at every turn, with half-measures, occasional strongly-worded letters, and the rest: He is the Chuck Schumer of finance. As Warshaw’s report puts it:
When an investment, and in this case a whole sector of investments, fails to perform over a long period of time and show no realistic signs of turning around, investment managers need to act. Each market cycle over the last two decades has left in its wake less value for fossil fuel companies and less value for fossil fuel investors. This value erosion and strong headwind threats are at the heart of the divestment argument. Why continue to invest in an industry that is now only 2.8% of the market with no plausible strategy to turn things around and a corporate culture that simply that denies the problem even exists? Investment managers need to focus their time on maximizing risk-adjusted returns, not engaging in politically-driven wishful thinking for an industry in permanent decline.
DiNapoli is not alone in his cowardice, of course. For a brief moment—when they were scared by the emergence of Greta’s worldwide movement before the pandemic—lots of financial leaders said they were going to take steps to address climate change. BlackRock, for instance, the biggest investor in the world, which has the power should it choose to use it, to make vast change fast. (BlackRock’s wealth is roughly twice the continent of Africa’s). Here’s what Larry Fink, CEO of BlackRock, said in 2020:
Climate change has become a defining factor in companies’ long-term prospects. Last September, when millions of people took to the streets to demand action on climate change, many of them emphasized the significant and lasting impact that it will have on economic growth and prosperity–a risk that markets to date have been slower to reflect. But awareness is rapidly changing, and I believe we are on the edge of a fundamental reshaping of finance.
The evidence on climate risk is compelling investors to reassess core assumptions about modern finance. Research from a wide range of organizations–including the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the BlackRock Investment Institute, and many others, including new studies from McKinsey on the socioeconomic implications of physical climate risk–is deepening our understanding of how climate risk will impact both our physical world and the global system that finances economic growth.
Will cities, for example, be able to afford their infrastructure needs as climate risk reshapes the market for municipal bonds? What will happen to the 30-year mortgage–a key building block of finance–if lenders can’t estimate the impact of climate risk over such a long timeline, and if there is no viable market for flood or fire insurance in impacted areas? What happens to inflation, and in turn interest rates, if the cost of food climbs from drought and flooding? How can we model economic growth if emerging markets see their productivity decline due to extreme heat and other climate impacts?
Investors are increasingly reckoning with these questions and recognizing that climate risk is investment risk.
But then what happened? Big Oil pushed back, in the form of red state treasurers promising to pull their money from BlackRock. Suddenly Fink turned tail and ran. By now he’s part of President Donald Trump’s inner circle. As Pilita Clark explained in that radical journal the Financial Times over the weekend, DiNapoli and Fink’s failure of courage is endemic across too much of the American elite landscape:
This failure is not due to a shortage of scientific understanding or technological breakthroughs. It is because we lack the political changes needed to put financial systems and economies on to paths that avoid burning fossil fuels. Achieving those changes is inordinately difficult.
Public support from large businesses is important. Ultimately, staying quiet at a time like this is self-defeating. It undermines the global institutions needed to address a growing global climate problem that poses serious financial threats.
David Gelles, in the Times, has another sad account of this collective failure of nerve on Wall Street, and it’s well worth reading. As he writes:
Republican legislatures around the country introduced more than 100 bills to penalize financial companies that supported ESG practices. Republican state treasurers around the country began pulling money out.
This is the company DiNapoli keeps, and the people he apparently listens to—again, he’s a lot more like Chuck Schumer than he should be. So it’s very good news that insurgent candidate Warshaw is talking about bringing New York State’s financial might to bear—in part because it amplifies the message being sent by Mark Levine, new comptroller of the city of New York. Levine’s predecessor Brad Lander, who already led the divestment from fossil fuel companies, late in his tenure called for the city to ditch BlackRock, and Levine seems to be interested in following through.
Together, the pension funds of New York City and New York state control far more resources than the funds of the various red states combined. If they manage to put effective pressure on the oil industry and the finance industry, it will have enormous impact—it will aid enormously in the climate fight and it will undercut Trump. And it will encourage other blue state leaders to do likewise: Always remember, most of the nation’s economy is in places that voted against Trump. It’s a weapon that needs to be used.
And New York can do so without putting anyone’s pension at risk—under the Empire State’s laws, the comptroller has to pay pensions in full no matter what happens to his investment portfolio, so there’s no danger Warshaw will do anything except save taxpayers large sums of money. (And Warshaw is not alone; the other Dem in the primary, Raj Goyle, has called for divestment too, though not with the same depth of analysis). This is a no-brainer, except if you’re stuck in your ways.
I helped found an organization devoted to elder action on behalf of climate and democracy; obviously I don’t think age disqualifies one from office. But DiNapoli is 71 and he represents the greatest danger of long tenure in office: a stultification of ideas, an inability to see new facts, a stubborn attachment to old ideas. It’s time for him, finally, to get out of the way, or to be voted out.
The climate fight, even in this country, is very far from over. The basic premise of that battle—that we must move swiftly away from the moral and financial sinkhole of Big Oil—is still clear and powerful.
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Pope Francis: A Humble Advocate for Sharing the World's Resources
Again and again, Pope Francis railed against our collective indifference to widespread suffering and urged humanity, especially world leaders, to do better. It's not too late to heed his call.
Apr 23, 2025
Like millions of other people, I was deeply saddened to hear of the passing of Pope Francis, one of the most vocal and humble advocates for sharing the world’s resources.
Since assuming the throne of St Peter in 2013, the Pope championed many causes that are dear to progressive activists—from agroecology to post-growth economics, fossil fuel divestment, arms trade regulation and global monetary reform.
But at the heart of his advocacy was a focus on ending inequality both globally and on a national basis, repeatedly calling upon governments to redistribute wealth and benefits to the poor in a new spirit of generosity.
I first recall being struck by Pope Francis’ headline-grabbing speech in 2014, when he urged the United Nations to promote a ‘worldwide ethical mobilization’ of solidarity with the poor to help curb an ‘economy of exclusion’ that is taking hold everywhere today.
A year later in 2015, the papal encyclical Laudato Si’—subtitled ‘On care for our common home’—made bigger headlines around the world with its powerful critique of laissez-faire ideology and its destructive effects on the environment. The trenchant letter expounded on the responsibility of rich countries to address their ‘ecological debt’ to less developed countries, with an acknowledgement of ‘differentiated responsibilities’ in addressing climate change. It was a radical entreaty for resource transfers between the Global North and South, and significant reductions in the consumption of non-renewable energy within developed countries.
The eloquent discourse of Laudato Si’ also reflected the core understanding of many environmental activists—that the climate and inequality crises are inextricably interconnected. Again and again, Pope Francis railed against our collective indifference to widespread human suffering. He persistently argued that the welfare of nations is interrelated, so the massive poverty and hunger experienced in the fragile economies of developing nations is, in turn, reflected in the destruction of the natural environment. Hence the urgency of remediating the enormous discrepancies in living standards throughout the world, which calls for a sense of global solidarity and interdependency that is tragically lacking in human affairs.
During the coronavirus pandemic, Francis also set out the challenge for rich nations to cooperate and distribute the vaccine freely to the world, rather than hoarding resources and treating one’s own nation first. The 2020 encyclical titled Fratelli tutti—‘Brother’s all’—made clear that Covid-19 was exposing existing inequalities, and fraternity on a state level requires richer countries to help poorer ones if we are to give meaning to the equality of human rights. Clearly, the world failed to heed Pope Francis’ plea to ensure recovery from the crisis tackled poverty, inequality and the climate emergency by ‘sharing resources in a just and respectable manner’.
Another theme that Francis constantly returned to was the need for cancelling the debts of countries unable to repay them. In his final papal bull for the Jubilee Year 2025, titled Spes non confundit—‘Hope does not disappoint’—he described debt forgiveness as a matter of justice more than generosity, and again decried the true ecological debt that exists between the Global North and South.
Francis was rightly known as the ‘Pope of the peripheries,’ standing up for the most vulnerable and marginalized peoples. He made clear his opposition to Western government policies of battening down the hatches and draconian responses to international migrants. Soon after taking office, Francis visited the Italian island of Lampedusa where he condemned European ‘indifference’ to the drowning of migrants crossing the Mediterranean in small boats. He later visited numerous camps for excluded migrants and refugees living ‘ghost lives in limbo,’ calling upon us to see Christ in the stranger and outsider. This was a sharp rebuke to reactionary politicians like Trump, Meloni, and Orbán, instead emphasizing the need for ‘universal fraternity’ as influenced by St. Francis of Assisi, after whom the Pope took his name.
It was a fitting testament to Francis’ advocacy for the poor and forgotten that he died hours after calling for a ceasefire in Gaza. In his annual Urbi et Orbi —‘To the City and World’—message on Easter Sunday, the day before he died, Francis repeated his appeal to the warring parties to "come to the aid of a starving people that aspires to a future of peace." Few politicians, it seems, have followed the Pope's counsel throughout his 12-year-long pontificate. Which now leaves it up to us, the ordinary people of goodwill, to uphold Francis’ tireless advocacy and hope for a better world.
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Why Are California’s Public Pension Funds Still Gambling Workers’ Savings on Fossil Fuels?
CalPERS and CalSTRS—collectively representing $780 billion and 2.5 million members—must act on their fiduciary duty and responsibly phase out fossil fuel holdings.
Oct 18, 2023
As world governments descended on New York City for Climate Week last month, California Attorney General Rob Bonta and Governor Gavin Newsom brought a momentous announcement: Following a year of record climate disasters, the state is suing the five biggest fossil fuel companies for climate damages and deception.
In this crucial move to hold the perpetrators of wildfires, floods, smoke, and deadly heat accountable for the destruction they are wreaking in our communities, the state of California joins dozens of municipalities with similar damages and deception lawsuits against major oil companies.
As far back as the 1970s, companies like Exxon, Chevron, and Shell knew all there was to know about the dangers of fossil fuel use causing global climate change—the very disasters we’re living through now. Instead of warning the rest of us, or pivoting their business models, the likes of Chevron doubled down on fossil fuels, all in the name of profit while the rest of us pay the cost.
There’s no room for coal, oil, and gas in any climate-safe investments.
So why are California’s public pension funds—CalPERS and CalSTRS, the two largest in the country—still gambling workers’ hard-earned savings on fossil fuels?
As revealed in a DeSmog exclusive, data pulled by Stand.earth and the Climate Safe Pensions Network from the Bloomberg Terminal reveals that CalPERS and CalSTRS collectively hold around $4.5 billion in Exxon Mobil, Shell, Chevron, ConocoPhillips, and BP, the five oil and gas corporations named as defendants in the lawsuit.
CalPERS and CalSTRS—collectively representing $780 billion and 2.5 million members—must act on their fiduciary duty and responsibly phase out fossil fuel holdings. There’s no room for coal, oil, and gas in any climate-safe investments.
That’s exactly what SB 252—California’s pension fossil fuel divestment bill—would achieve. The widely supported Fossil Fuel Divestment Bill, which passed the Senate in 2023, will head straight to the state Assembly in 2024.
To date, nearly 1,600 institutions representing over $40 trillion in assets have committed to fossil fuel divestment. In 2023 alone, new commitments came from the Church of England, New York University, and many more, after years of futile attempts to “engage with fossil fuel companies” and “help fossil fuel clients transition” failed.
Following the announcement of the lawsuit, Governor Newsom officially signed SB 253 and SB 261 into law—two of the three bills in California’s Climate Accountability Package (the third being SB 252). SB 253, the Climate Corporate Data Accountability Act, will require U.S.-based corporations doing business in California that make over $1 billion annually to publicly disclose their carbon footprint. SB 261, the Climate-Related Financial Risk Act, will require corporations, financial institutions, and insurers to report on climate-related financial risk.
As Governor Newsom said himself:
California taxpayers shouldn’t have to foot the bill for billions of dollars in damages—wildfires wiping out entire communities, toxic smoke clogging our air, deadly heat waves, record-breaking droughts parching our wells. With this lawsuit, California is taking action to hold big polluters accountable and deliver the justice our people deserve.
It’s time to bring the full Climate Accountability Package over the finish line, and pass SB 252 in 2024.
This is not only about divesting from fossil-fueled chaos, this is about correcting the course of California’s public pensions and aligning them with California’s climate-safe future: a future that includes renewable energy, Indigenous ecological leadership, affordable housing, and accessible healthcare and public transit for all. We have the opportunity to build a California where all of us can thrive.
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Why Fossil Fuel Divestment Works
Divestment is the start of a process of reducing the tremendous influence of the fossil fuel industry on our political system and thereby making it possible to win government action on climate change.
Jul 09, 2023
There is much debate about what fossil fuel divestment accomplishes. Some critics say it sounds good but accomplishes very little. They look at the economics and correctly conclude that divestment does not financially hurt fossil companies. However, these critics miss the political impact of divestment.
The goals of fossil fuel divestment are twofold. First, is to raise public awareness of climate change and the responsibility of fossil companies. Second, is to stigmatize or delegitimize the fossil fuel industry by calling them out as bad actors, weakening them politically, and thereby helping win government action on climate change. The University of Oxford Stranded Assets Program studied a number of divestment movements and concluded that almost all had been successful in ultimately winning restrictive legislation against their targeted industries.
Divestment is the start of a process of reducing the tremendous influence of the fossil fuel industry on our political system and thereby making it possible to win government action on climate change. Think about how the tobacco divestment movement made it unacceptable for politicians to take their campaign contributions and that in turn made it possible for the first time to pass public health legislation aimed at reducing smoking.
We are slowly starting to see delegitimization happen with fossil fuels.
Think about how the divestment movement from South African Apartheid in the 1980s made Apartheid unacceptable. And this in a country that has long turned a blind eye to racial oppression at home and oppression by U.S. supported regimes around the world. Twenty-six states, 22 counties, and over 90 cities took some form of divestment action against companies doing business in South Africa. As a result, the divestment movement had great power to shape public opinion and sway politicians. In 1986, Congress passed the Comprehensive Anti-Apartheid Act, which banned new U.S. investment in South Africa, and sales to the police and military. President Ronald Reagan vetoed the act, but the Republican-controlled Senate overrode the veto. That was the power of the divestment movement.
We are slowly starting to see delegitimization happen with fossil fuels. Nationwide over 3,700 politicians have signed a pledge not to take campaign contributions from the fossil fuel industry, including most notably President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris. The California Democratic Party recently voted not to accept fossil fuel money. In 2018, the Democratic National Committee did the same thing, but then quickly reversed course under pressure from some sectors of organized labor.
Economics versus Politics
Although divestment involves stocks and investments, the effects of divestment are political rather than directly financial. Research to date indicates that at best divestment announcements may have small, very short-term impacts on companies’ stock prices. There is no research showing that divestment directly financially harms fossil fuel companies or changes their behavior. Three economists won the Nobel Prize for their work showing that the massive anti-apartheid divestments had no effects on the share prices of targeted companies. Even the Oxford report on divestment movements, which finds strong political effects of divestment, recommends divestment campaigners “understand that the direct impacts are likely to be minimal.”
Of course, government action promoting clean energy and restricting fossil fuel projects, and possibly reduced bank financing will ultimately greatly harm fossil fuel companies, but this will come about due to the political effects of divestment, rather than direct financial impacts.
Even if divestment did financially harm companies that would be woefully inadequate to address climate change. We cannot wait for economic pressure to make new fossil fuel projects unprofitable—governments can stop permitting new projects now. We need government incentives and mandates for building electrification and electric vehicle use. To grow clean energy requires government tax credits, subsidies, and renewable portfolio standards. It will take government policies to ensure all this happens in a just and equitable way. We need government action on many fronts, and divestment can helps us win that action against fierce fossil fuel industry opposition.
Implications for the Divestment Movement
Whether the effects of divestment are political or financial affects the divestment movement in a number of ways.
Publicity and Messaging: For politics-focused divestment activists publicity and messaging are key. They want as many people as possible to know about a divestment demand or actual divestment action, and they want the message to be that divestment was done because of the immorality and responsibility of the fossil fuel industry with regard to climate change. If the message is instead that divestment is a smart financial move (which it is) that is not as powerful an outcome as it contributes less to delegitimizing the fossil fuel industry.
Politics-focused activists still need to use financial arguments to convince decision makers to divest and, in the case of pension funds, convince pensioners that they will not be hurt. But in a thoughtful paper, Daniel Apfel warns that too much focus on financial arguments distracts from moral arguments and may “...come into conflict with raising awareness of the destruction of frontline communities from fossil fuel extraction and effects of climate change.” It is also important that stigmatization be focused on fossil fuel companies not the institutions doing the investing, whether that be pension funds or universities.
For politics-focused divestment activists, divestment is a means to winning government action on climate change. Divestment in of itself is not the end.
What Gets Divested and Timeframe: Finance-focused activists often advocate for divestment not just from fossil fuel producers, but from a broad array of related industries such as equipment manufacturers, pipeline companies, and fossil fuel powered electric utilities. And they often want divestment to occur in as short a timeframe as possible and include not just fossil fuel stocks and bonds but also index funds that contain any fossil fuels and private equity. For politics-focused divestment activists a broad divestment demand is viewed as not as important as it does not affect the political impact of divestment. Strategically, a very broad divestment demand will be harder to win than a narrower demand, and it is the victory that most achieves the publicity and delegitimization goals of divestment.
Building a Movement: For politics-focused divestment activists, divestment is a means to winning government action on climate change. Divestment in of itself is not the end. Therefore, it is important to create a broad movement fighting on climate change issues that will build on divestment wins and push for government action on climate. For finance-focused divestment activists, divestment is seen as directly impacting fossil fuel companies, so there is less of a need to focus on winning government action or on building a broad movement.
Fortunately, despite differences in views about what divestment accomplishes, activists of different views are successfully collaborating in building a global fossil fuel divestment movement. To date almost 1,600 organizations have divested, with combined holdings of over $40 trillion.
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Database Shows US Cities, Colleges, and Even Green Groups Are Employing Fossil Fuel Lobbyists
"You shouldn't be funding the person who is poisoning you," said one former mayor.
Jul 05, 2023
More than 1,500 lobbyists in the United States who work on behalf of the fossil fuel industry have also been hired by local governments, universities, and environmental organizations that claim to be addressing the climate emergency, a database published Wednesday by F Minus reveals.
To take just three examples highlighted by The Guardian, which first reported on the searchable database of state-level lobbyists for upstream and midstream oil, gas, and coal interests: "Baltimore, which is suing Big Oil firms for their role in causing climate-related damages, has shared a lobbyist with ExxonMobil, one of the named defendants in the case. Syracuse University, a pioneer in the fossil fuel divestment movement, has a lobbyist with 14 separate oil and gas clients... The Environmental Defense Fund shares lobbyists with ExxonMobil, Calpine, and Duke Energy, all major gas producers."
F Minus, launched this month, says its goal is to demonstrate the extent to which fossil fuel lobbyists "are also representing people, schools, communities, and businesses being harmed by the climate crisis."
“It's incredible that this has gone under the radar for so long, as these lobbyists help the fossil fuel industry wield extraordinary power," James Browning, the group's executive director, told The Guardian. "Many of these cities and counties face severe costs from climate change and yet elected officials are selling their residents out. It's extraordinary."
"The worst thing about hiring these lobbyists is that it legitimizes the fossil fuel industry," Browning said. "They can cloak their radical agenda in respectability when their lobbyists also have clients in the arts, or city government, or with conservation groups. It normalizes something that is very dangerous."
"When you hire these insider lobbyists, you are basically working with double agents. They are guns for hire. The information you share with them is probably going to the opposition."
As the group notes: "The fossil fuel industry is rapidly losing the social license needed to build new projects as the severity of the climate crisis becomes increasingly clear and the public embraces the energy transition. Nevertheless, the fossil fuel industry remains firmly embedded in state capitols because of positive or merely neutral public opinion about its lobbyists."
"Multi-client lobbyists are often described as 'gatekeepers' to state officials because of their personal relationships and broad range of expertise," F Minus explains. "State lobbying laws prohibit these multi-client lobbyists from lobbying on both sides of a particular piece of legislation or other governmental action, but nothing prohibits a fossil fuel lobbyist from also working for a company or an organization that is being negatively impacted by the climate crisis."
"Victims of the crisis and advocates for net-zero and other climate goals routinely hire lobbyists who are promoting further dependence on fossil fuels on behalf of their other clients," the group's research shows. "F Minus is disrupting this dynamic and calling on people to fire their fossil fuel lobbyists."
F Minus found that more than 150 U.S. colleges and universities employed oil and gas industry lobbyists last year. Many of the institutions that have taken steps to divest from fossil fuels in recent years—including Dartmouth and California State—have Big Oil lobbyists on their payrolls.
Additionally, the group identified "several national and dozens of local organizations who work for wildlife conservation, emissions reductions, and other solutions to the climate crisis employ lobbyists who also work for the fossil fuel industry."
"The motives for these conservation groups employing coal, oil, and gas lobbyists may vary," the group observes, "but the impact of this strategy is to help these fossil fuel lobbyists present themselves as environmentalists."
Moreover, "some of the country's most climate-conscious local governments—and communities being hardest-hit by the climate crisis—employ lobbyists who also work for the fossil fuel industry," F Minus laments. California is home to many of the "thousands of towns, cities, and counties whose employment of fossil fuel lobbyists is radically at odds with their own plans to deal with the crisis."
As The Guardian reported:
Meghan Sahli-Wells saw the pressure exerted by fossil fuel lobbying first-hand while she was mayor of Culver City, California, where she spearheaded a move to ban oil drilling near homes and schools. Culver City, part of Los Angeles County, overlaps with the Inglewood oilfield, and the close proximity of oilwells to residences has been blamed for worsening health problems, such as asthma, as well as fueling the climate crisis.
"It takes so much community effort and political lift to pass policies and then these lobbying firms come in and try to undo them overnight," said Sahli-Wells, who ended her second mayoral term in 2020. Oil and gas interests, which spent $34 million across California lobbying lawmakers and state agencies last year, mobilized against the ban, arguing it would be economically harmful and cause gasoline prices to spike.
"There was just a huge push from the fossil fuel industry," Sahli-Wells said. "It's not a good look to be funding lobbyists for fossil fuels, especially with public money."
"I hope that many people just don't know they share lobbyists with fossil fuel companies and that this database will bring transparency and allow leaders to better vet these companies," she added. "You shouldn't be funding the person who is poisoning you."
A study published in May showed that the fossil fuel industry is more likely than other industries to lobby and its spending on "climate policy obstruction" has increased as opposition to its life-threatening business model grows.
Timmons Roberts, an environmental sociologist at Brown University, told The Guardian that "the fossil fuel industry is very good at getting what it wants because they get the lobbyists best at playing the game. They have the best staff, huge legal departments, and the ability to funnel dark money to lobbying and influence channels."
"This database really makes it apparent that when you hire these insider lobbyists, you are basically working with double agents," said Roberts. "They are guns for hire. The information you share with them is probably going to the opposition."
"It would make a big difference if all of these institutions cut all ties with fossil fuel lobbyists, even if they lose some access to insider decisions," he added. "It would be taking one more step to removing the social license from an industry that's making the planet uninhabitable."
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US Public Pensions Are Paying Huge Price for Not Divesting From Fossil Fuels, Report Shows
"The writing's on the wall for fossil fuels," said one divestment campaign.
Jun 28, 2023
Climate campaigners on Wednesday said the latest research on fossil fuel divestment should convince pension funds to pull their money out of the oil, gas, and coal sectors, as a new study found that six major U.S. funds have lost out on tens of billions of dollars by continuing to invest in fossil energy.
The global campaign network Stand.earth joined the University of Waterloo in Canada in analyzing the public equity portfolios of the pension funds, including the California Public Employees' Retirement System (CalPERS), the Alaska Retirement Management Board (ARMB), and the New York State Teachers' Retirement System (NYSTRS).
Between 2013 and 2022, the total value of the portfolios grew to $402.8 billion, but without investments in fossil energy, the funds would be worth $424.6 billion today, according to the study, which was published Monday.
The difference of more than $21 billion holds true despite the fact that the fossil fuel industry has reported record profits in the past year.
CalPERS lost $4.7 billion over the past decade, costing pensioners an average of $3,163, as a result of its fossil fuel investments, the study found.
"That’s because, along with being actively bad for the planet, fossil fuel has been actively bad for its shareholders," wrote 350.org cofounder and author Bill McKibben in a Los Angeles Times op-ed on Wednesday. "It dramatically underperformed other asset classes for the past decade, and for an obvious reason: A new industry, renewable energy, has arisen that delivers the same product, just more cheaply and cleanly."
Divestment "has not been that attractive from a financial point of view" in the last three years as "the value of the fossil fuel sector went up because of the reduced oil supply from Russia" and the Covid-19 pandemic, said Stand.earth.
However, "even in times of high performance in the fossil fuel sector, divestment does not reduce financial returns in any significant way," found the group.
"The average difference between the reference portfolio and the ex-energy portfolio is 13 percentage points," reads the report, meaning the funds would have seen a return on investment that was 13 percentage points higher on average over the past decade if they had removed their investments from fossil fuels.
Switch It Green, which calls on banks to divest from fossil energy sources, said that although campaigners know financial entities "refuse to stop funding fossil fuels for the sake of the planet, maybe they will for their pockets?"
"If climate chaos like fires and floods weren't enough, this latest report strengthens the case even further that public pension funds must divest from fossil fuels as part of meeting their fiduciary duties," said Amy Gray, senior climate finance strategist at Stand.earth. “As the longest-term investors for workers, the last thing pension funds should be doing is gambling with retirement and deferred wages of their members."
Tom Sanzillo, director of financial analysis at the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis, told DeSmog that while the oil and gas sector have reported record profits in recent years, their revenues" are unsustainable and their future is on shaky ground."
The sector accounts for 5% or less of the stock market today, compared to 28% four decades ago.
"Financially it doesn't make sense to stay invested [in fossil fuels]," Olaf Weber, a sustainable finance professor at University of Waterloo who co-authored the report, told DeSmog, noting that previous research has determined that public pension funds in California and Colorado would have gained $19 billion if they'd divested from fossil fuels in 2009.
The study out this week found that pension funds would have drastically improved their carbon footprint if they had pulled their money out of fossil fuels a decade ago, reducing their emissions by 16.6% or nearly 280 million tons—"a win-win situation" for the funds and the planet, the researchers said.
"Influential investors, like these large public pension funds, can bring about positive change on a few fronts," said Weber. "Energy divestments can create higher returns for the funds, which leads to higher returns for the beneficiaries and reduced exposure to climate risks. Consequently, it leads to safer pensions."
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Why California’s Public Employee Pension Funds Should Divest From Fossil Fuels
To date almost 1,600 institutions worldwide with over 40 trillion dollars in assets have divested from fossil fuel companies; CalPERS and CalSTRS should join them.
Jun 20, 2023
Senate Bill 252, which requires California’s two large public employee pensions funds, CalPERS and CalSTRS, to divest from the 100 top oil and gas companies by 2030,
passed the state Senate in May. Divest means selling off any stock or bond holdings in these companies and not buying new fossil fuel stocks or bonds.
Divestment is a moral issue. We divested from companies doing business in Apartheid South Africa because we thought profiting from racial oppression was immoral. We divested from tobacco companies because knowingly selling and promoting a product that causes cancer is immoral. There is now a global fossil fuel divestment movement because fossil fuel companies are using their wealth and tremendous political power to block desperately needed climate change legislation—around the globe and right here in California.
In addition, like tobacco companies, the fossil fuel industry’s own scientists knew the harm their product was causing but the companies kept that knowledge secret and publicly denied it—even as they were extending the legs of drilling rigs to deal with sea level rise. Even today, fossil fuel companies are greenwashing rather than truly addressing climate change. Moreover, CalPERS unwittingly becomes party to that greenwashing, as when, for example, it promoted Exxon’s bogus net zero by 2050 claims to members.
When companies act this immorally and with such catastrophic consequences for human society and life on the planet, public pension funds should not engage with them as if they were good corporate citizens; they should instead divest.
A group of California coastal counties have sued 37 major oil companies for damages due to sea level rise. Their suit powerfully makes the moral case. Here are three quotes:
“Defendants have known for nearly 50 years that greenhouse gas pollution from their fossil fuel products has a significant impact on the Earth’s climate and sea levels.”
“With that knowledge, defendants took steps to protect their own assets from these threats through immense internal investment in research, infrastructure improvements, and plans to exploit new opportunities in a warming world.”
“Defendants’ conduct was so vile, base, and contemptible that it would be looked down upon and despised by reasonable people.”
You may be thinking this is all fine and well, but will divestment hurt pensioners? Fortunately, a number of studies indicate that divestment is financially prudent. For example, as the City of New York was considering divesting its three large retirement funds, it hired the financial consulting firms BlackRock and Meketa to independently write reports on divestment. Here is a quote from an article about the reports: “BlackRock and Meketa have separately concluded that investment funds have experienced no negative financial impacts from divesting from fossil fuels. In fact, they found evidence of modest improvement in fund returns.”
And SB 252 contains an “escape clause” such that if CalPERS thinks divesting from a fossil fuel company is not financially prudent, then it doesn’t have to divest.
What about engagement as an alternative strategy to divestment? Engagement is when owners of company stock try to get companies to change their practices through shareholder resolutions. There are several reasons why shareholder engagement, which can be a powerful strategy in some circumstances, is not likely to be effective in the case of fossil fuel companies and climate change.
First, what is needed, keeping the majority of fossil fuel reserves in the ground unburned, would represent astronomical financial losses to the fossil fuel industry. Not surprisingly then, the industry has fought tooth and nail against addressing climate change, and still claims today that all its reserves can and will be burned. Pope Francis put it this way, “Is it realistic to hope that those who are obsessed with maximizing profits will stop to reflect on the environmental damage which they will leave behind for future generations?”
Shareholder engagement promotes the image of fossil fuel companies as good corporate citizens, which actually strengthens their political power to fight climate legislation. This is exactly opposite the strategy of divestment, which aims to weaken the political power of fossil fuel companies by calling them out as bad actors, and thereby win climate legislation. Former Securities and Exchange Commission commissioner Bevis Longstreth in Climate Change and Investment in Fossil Fuel Companies: The Strategy of Engagement Won't Work said:
“Indeed, engagement is likely to assist Big Oil and Big Coal in postponing the day when governments limit the burning of fossil fuels … Engagement with institutional investors like Harvard gives the fossil fuel giants the protective cover they need to stretch out the transition process to renewables for as long as they can. It legitimizes talk over action.”
To date almost 1,600 institutions worldwide with over 40 trillion dollars in assets have divested from fossil fuel companies, including the state and city of New York retirement funds, the state of Maine, Quebec province, the Vatican, United Church of Christ, Episcopal Church USA, Unitarian Church, World Council of Churches, and the California State University and University of California systems. Senate Bill (SB) 252 now has 140 organizations offering official support including religious, environmental, and public health groups. Labor unions representing over 470,000 California workers have signed on in support of SB 252 including the California Faculty Association, California Federation of Teachers, AFSCME CA, California Nurses Association, and the ILWU.
In summary, when companies act this immorally and with such catastrophic consequences for human society and life on the planet, public pension funds should not engage with them as if they were good corporate citizens; they should instead divest. Arch Bishop Desmond Tutu said, “People of conscience need to break their ties with corporations financing the injustice of climate change.”
“It makes no sense to invest in companies that undermine our future,” he continued. “To serve as custodians of creation is not an empty title; it requires that we act, and with all the urgency this dire situation demands.”
The California Faculty Association is one of SB 252’s main sponsors, along with the nonprofit Fossil Free California. For more information on the bill, see https://fossilfreeca.org/divestment-legislation/.
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Seniors to Bolster Youth-Led Climate Strikes With Day of Action Against Dirty Banks
"We have to show young people we have their back," said veteran climate advocate Bill McKibben.
Mar 20, 2023
Determined not to leave all the responsibility for climate action with young campaigners like Greta Thunberg and the Sunrise Movement, older Americans are organizing a nationwide Day of Action planned for Tuesday, with the aim of wielding the relative political and economic power of people aged 60 and up to pressure big banks to stop funding fossil fuel projects.
Following actor and activist Jane Fonda's "Fire Drill Friday" protests that began in Washington, D.C. in 2019, longtime climate advocate Bill McKibben founded Third Act last year to mobilize older Americans who wanted to show solidarity with the Generation Z activists leading worldwide climate protests in recent years.
The grassroots effort quickly attracted 50,000 members, many of whom are taking part in the organization's Stop Dirty Banks action on Tuesday—a nationwide blockade of the branches of banks like Wells Fargo, Chase, Citibank, and Bank of America, which have collectively poured $1.1 trillion into fossil fuel projects since the 2015 Paris climate agreement was forged.
Nearly 100 public actions on Tuesday will include a literal "Rocking Chair Rebellion," as McKibben has called the movement, with advocates placing painted rocking chairs at the entrances of bank branches, slicing credit cards with giant pairs of scissors, and displaying papier mache orcas that will eat credit cards to demonstrate that older Americans will no longer support companies that back plant-heating oil and gas projects.
"We have everything we need to turn toward clean energy," said Akaya Windwood, a longtime social justice leader who leads Third Act's advisory council, in a video posted to social media ahead of the protest. "All we're lacking is the political and economic will, so we're calling out the big banks to disinvest in fossil fuels and invest in air that all of us can breathe."
Windwood filmed herself cutting up her credit card ahead of the Day of Action, as did writer Rebecca Solnit, mountain climber Kitty Calhoun, and ocean conservationist Wendy Benchley.
In an op-ed for Common Dreams last week, McKibben, who is 62, noted that his generation on the whole has amassed more "structural power" than the young people who have worked to pressure lawmakers to support the Green New Deal and organized school walkouts as part of the Fridays for Future movement.
"We all vote, so the political impact of the 70 million Americans over 60 is much magnified," wrote McKibben. "And we ended up—fairly or not—with something like 70% of the country's financial assets, so we can put some pressure on banks."
McKibben added that it is "ignoble and impractical" to leave climate action up to younger people.
"So far the kids have had to do all of the work and they've done an amazing job but it's not fair to ask 18-year-olds to solve this problem," the author and 350.org cofounder told The Guardian. "We have to show young people we have their back. I'm going to be dead before the climate crisis is at its absolute worst, but being nearer the exit than the entrance concentrates one's mind to notions of legacy and we are the first generation to leave the world in a worse place than we found it."
McKibben will join rally-goers on Tuesday in Washington, D.C., where activists will stage a "rocking chair rebellion" in an intersection outside two of the "big four" banks.
The nationwide Day of Action is being held a day after the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) issued its latest report on the climate crisis, showing, as United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres said, that all licensing and funding of new oil and gas extraction must be ceased and all public and private funding of coal must come to an end.
From California to New York, McKibben said Monday on social media, advocates have been alerting bank branches about the coming public actions—displaying all-night projections at Wells Fargo and Chase locations that warn, "Banks: Cut it out or we'll cut it up."
"Banks have particular reason to listen to older people, because so much of the money in the vault belongs to them," wrote McKibben last week. "And because we're hard to outwait. Youth climate organizers have only a decade or so before they're on to the next stage of their lives. Sixty year-old climate activists are likely to have twice that long or more—and we've often got lots of free time."
"Chase and Citi and Wells Fargo and Bank of America should be worried: we're not going anywhere any time soon," he added. "We'll just keep rocking on."
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Kentucky's GOP Treasurer Falsely Claims Big Banks Are Boycotting Fossil Fuels
The Republican threatened to divest from financial institutions including JPMorgan Chase and Citigroup—widely accused of failing to meet even modest climate goals—under a state law banning "energy company boycotts."
Jan 03, 2023
Kentucky's Republican treasurer on Tuesday threatened to divest from 11 financial institutions—including major fossil fuel investors—that she falsely claimed were "engaged in energy company boycotts" in violation of commonwealth law.
"When companies boycott fossil fuels, they intentionally choke off the lifeblood of capital to Kentucky's signature industries," Treasurer Allison Ball said in a statement. "Traditional energy sources fuel our Kentucky economy, provide much-needed jobs, and warm our homes. Kentucky must not allow our signature industries to be irreparably damaged based upon the ideological whims of a select few."
In the same statement, Ball's office said that "all listed financial companies must stop engaging in the energy company boycott to avoid becoming subject to divestment."
Last year, Kentucky's Republican-dominated Legislature passed, and Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear signed into law, S.B. 205, which takes aim at environmental, social, and governance (ESG) investing, a set of criteria that include companies' policies for addressing the climate emergency.
Republicans have derided ESG as "woke" investing. Numerous GOP-led states have divested billions of dollars from targeted investment firms—even when doing so harms them financially.
Ball's list includes BlackRock—one of the world's largest investors in fossil fuels and deforestation—as well as institutions such as JPMorgan Chase and Citigroup, which also rank among the top fossil fuel industry financiers, according to Bloomberg. Climate campaigners have criticized many of the financial institutions on Ball's list for failing to meet even the modest climate goals they've set for themselves.
"The fact is that we are among the largest financers of the U.S. traditional and renewable energy industries, including in Kentucky, where we serve some of its largest energy companies and utilities," JPMorgan Chase spokesperson Trish Wexler told Bloomberg. "We believe our business practices are in line with Kentucky law, and we are hopeful a deeper look at these facts would lead to reconsideration."
BlackRock spokesperson Christopher Van Es told Bloomberg that "on behalf of our clients, we have invested approximately $276 billion in energy companies globally. BlackRock does not boycott energy companies and will continue to be investors across the energy sector."
Ball's office gave state agencies 30 days to say whether they hold investments in any of the listed financial institutions, and 90 days to "cease boycotting energy companies in order to avoid divestment."
"Treasurer Ball has long been a national leader in the fight against harmful ESG schemes which hurt our economy, threaten our national security, and prioritize political goals above financial returns," the treasurer's office said. "The compilation of this list is the latest in a series of her efforts to oppose this dangerous practice."
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Biden Policies Signal the Beginning of the End for CO2 Emissions
We are on the verge of an amazing new, low-carbon America. CO2 emissions will be with us for years to come, but by 2030 perhaps we can start talking about the beginning of the end.
Dec 28, 2022
In the midst of World War II, on November 10, 1942, Winston Churchill said of the war: “Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.”
The year 2022 was disappointing for the stated American goal of reducing the country’s carbon dioxide emissions, which rose by 1.5%. In contrast, China’s emissions fell by 0.9% and Europe, despite the Putin energy crisis decreased its output by 0.8%.
The Inflation Reduction Act has $369 billion in it to promote green energy.
The Biden administration and U.S. civil society organizations and private companies, however, laid the groundwork for potentially impressive U.S. progress through the rest of this decade. That is, 2022 may have been the end of the beginning.
The Infrastructure and Jobs Act passed a little over a year ago contained $7.5 billion for zero- and low-emission buses and ferries, and another $7.5 billion for a nation-wide network of electric car chargers. It contains $105 billion to upgrade and expand public transportation, which will mean fewer people dependent on automobiles. Even the monies dedicated to improving port and airport infrastructure have a mandate to reduce congestion and carbon emissions.
While initially Postmaster Louis DeJoy, a Trump-era holdover, was dragging his feet on electric vehicle purchase, he caved to pressure from the administration and Congress and has agreed to purchase at least 66,000 battery-electric vehicles through 2028 as part of a 106,000 vehicle purchase plan. He is also expanding USPS parking structures and putting in electric chargers. All environmentalists would have been pleased if he would move even faster. Still, there are only 1.7 million EVs on the road in the US (up from 400,000 in the second quarter of 2018), and 66,000 would be 4% of all those existing electric vehicles. The more EVs are bought, the more the price of the batteries will fall and the more their efficiency will increase. Automobile costs are expected to fall over the next decade as a result, and big government purchases will be very helpful.
This year, 18% of new car registrations in California were electric, and about 6% in the country as a whole. That is a big increase from almost zero just a few years ago. All the big auto firms are betting the farm on going electric, and with Biden administration help are building billions of dollars worth of new battery plants. It will take a few years for this build-out to come to fruition, but when it happens, it will be like opening the floodgates.
There are only 229 coal-fired power plants left in the U.S. In November, President Joe Biden pledged to close them all. Despite the energy crisis, nearly 6% (11,778 megawatts) of U.S. coal-fired generation capacity is expected to shut down in 2022. If we can double that rate of closure every year for the next ten years, they will all be gone by 2032, which is a reasonable expectation. The cost of solar-wind-battery generation will fall over that period, making coal prohibitively expensive. In fact, coal is already expensive, costing about 6 cents a kilowatt hour to generate electricity. That does not count all the health and climate damage it does. If that were figured in, it would be more like 80 cents a kilowatt hour. In contrast, wind and solar are roughly 4 cents a kilowatt hour and have been falling. In very sunny states solar could be as little as 2 cents a kilowatt hour.
Battery storage capacity is also increasing rapidly throughout the states, which can cover at least some high-demand periods. California is up to 3 gigawatts, with plans for more.
The Inflation Reduction Act has $369 billion in it to promote green energy. The Biden Administration is letting leases for offshore wind farms. $4 billion in bids were let for New York and New Jersey alone, and over $700 million for installations off the coast of California. Likewise, Houston and New Orleans have their eyes on this energy source. Off the coast of the Atlantic and the Gulf of Mexico the shelf is shallow enough so that wind turbines can be anchored to the sea bottom. The Pacific is so deep off California that firms will have to put up floating wind turbines, of a sort that have been installed off the coast of Scotland. The U.S. has lagged behind on offshore wind as an energy source, having almost none right now. But in two years, that will begin changing. One advantage of offshore wind is that winds blow more steadily out at sea and so those turbines can take up some of the slack from solar panels, which go dark at sundown.
We are on the verge of an amazing new, low-carbon America. CO2 emissions will be with us for years to come, but by 2030 perhaps we can start talking about the beginning of the end.
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